"Many Shades of Truth"
by FyrDrakken <FyrDrakken@juno.com>
Rating: R/NC17 for rough language, eventual sex, and *disturbing emotional content*.
WARNING: The main character has *issues*. Plus there’s violence and underaged sex and bad things happening to young children. Readers past this point take full responsibility for their own psychological scarring.
Archive: WR Fanfic Archive and X-Men Movie Fanfic Archive, all others ask first. (The answer will no doubt be yes — I'm easy! — but I like to know who's got my stuff!)
Classification: Character development leading to eventual smut.
Series: Pretend like it’s in the same continuity as "Practice Makes
Perfect" and the rest of the series, but about forty years into the future.
(I make no promises as to whether this is *really* how "Practice"
turns out eventually!)
Disclaimer: Lots of corporations like Fox and Marvel, and people like Bryan Singer and Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin, hold more rights in the characters and settings I'm playing with than I do. But I'm even more broke than Marvel, so I'm not worth the time and trouble of suing... The only "profit" I'm getting out of this is getting the demons out of my head without resorting to my family's traditional substance abuse, serial marriages and/or self-mutilation...
Feedback: Questions, comments and snide remarks directed to <FyrDrakken@juno.com> will receive guaranteed responses. Messages sent to a list may go unnoticed indefinitely, me being on so many now that I've had to go "no mail" on most of them. ;-) As an Elitist Fic Bitch in good standing, I welcome constructive criticism -- if there's a problem in something I've written I *really* want to know about it so I can fix it!
Thanks: To all those whose feedback on my prior stories (and repeated requests and demands for sequels!) have given the incentive to continue to lose sleep slaving over an overheating laptop! And again to jenn for her betaing, too...
Character note: Comics-following readers may wonder if the T.J. referred to herein is in fact the same character as Nocturne in EXILES. Yes — and no. I gave her a different mother (because it suited my plotting better), slightly different powers (because I didn’t like the ones she had in the comic and felt that the change in genetics justified a little "reshuffling" of attributes and abilities), and of course different personal issues and problems (to better fit the situation). Basically, same name, same appearance (without the cornrows, that is), same father, but beyond that she’s an AU-version of the character. (I say this to acknowledge the differences between my portrayal of the character and the canonical version — she is altered by design, not by ignorance.)
Soundtrack and quotations: I've tried to find a quote to kick off each scene that reasonably matches the mood or subject matter, some taken from song lyrics and others not. All songs quoted were chosen for lyrics first and foremost, and should *not* be taken as "soundtrack" indications. (If you need a soundtrack, put Tool and Jack Off Jill on heavy rotation. Especially Aenima, Lateralus, and Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers.)
Note:
[ ] = Thoughts
* * = Emphasis
/ / = Jack reliving a bit of borrowed memory
* * *
"Many Shades of Truth"
by FyrDrakken
* * *
* * *
Yesterday I did a bad thing.
I got very angry with another boy, and lost control.
Right now, he’s in the hospital. With his jaw wired shut and a concussion and some broken bones and a lot of bruises and some cuts and scrapes.
Just because he beat up on some band nerd and the guy had a friend who’s a friend of mine, and she asked me to step in. And I didn’t think playing the clarinet was worth getting your ass kicked by some jock over, so I agreed. And then that dick said that I’d better get my little freshman ass out of his way or he and some of the other football jerks would work me over some afternoon.
I don’t remember much of what happened after that until his and my friends pulled me off him.
But I know I shouldn’t have done it.
* * *
* * *
All of the above is bullshit.
Well.
Maybe not *all* of it.
In fact, most of it is pretty much true.
It’s just that some of the details were left out. There was some background shit going on that I didn’t fill in.
I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of that whole "Getting my feelings down on paper" exercise that the school counselor decided to have me do after this latest little "outburst." Which is why I’m writing *this* version, for *me*. But the counselors and shrinks don’t get to see it, because there’s some shit that public schools just aren’t really equipped to handle.
Like the "M" word.
* * *
It isn’t the same M-word it was in my parents’ day. (Or at least in *Mom’s* day — we have no idea *when* Dad’s day was, him least of all.) Back then, being a mutant was a big deal.
It’s not exactly a picnic now, but at least you don’t have to worry about being shot down in the streets or taken into custody by the government anymore. Those of us who can pass for "normal" don’t always choose to "out" ourselves, but the ones like my friend Helene Stewart can at least go to a regular school. I’m not saying she doesn’t get hassled sometimes, but she manages. She’s actually popular. Fantastic personality. When Helene’s mother T.J. was in high school, she had to try to pass for human to have any hope of fitting in. When T.J. was in elementary, she would actually get into trouble for defending herself when the other kids teased her. So I guess things have definitely improved for mutants.
But "mutant" isn’t the M-word I’m thinking about right now.
It’s "murder."
* * *
"Forgetting is a drug. Forgetting is a gift from the soul to the brain,
a blessing of peace. Forgetting is a boat you climb into, out of the black cold
depths; it rocks you safely, though precariously, far from any shore."
— Kaspian Lost, by Richard Grant
* * *
Here’s another M-word for you: "memory."
Do you have any idea what it’s really like to get another person inside your head?
I don’t mean telepathy. Telepaths are a dime a dozen — especially now that mutants have gotten so common. They pop up all the time.
What my Mom and I have is much rarer. We can actually draw out a person’s thoughts and memories.
In some ways it’s more limiting. We need touch contact, and we only get the thoughts from the actual moment of contact. The memories that come along can’t be controlled, and pop up when and where they want to, like an acid flashback. A telepath can "reach out and touch you" from farther away and can keep following your thoughts as they need to. They can dig for what they want.
On the other hand, Mom and I keep the memories we get. They mingle with our own. Sometimes, it’s like getting advice from someone who isn’t there — like the way I "cheat" in my science classes by using my brother-in-law’s memories. (Hey, having a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and biochemist in the family has to be good for *something*.)
Sometimes, though, you really want to just pour some industrial-strength cleanser into an ear and flush the hell out of your frontal lobes.
* * *
Take sex, for example.
You might think it was an advantage for a teenager to suddenly get a head full of, among other things, the varied sex lives of a number of adults of both sexes. Like getting advice from a number of men on the how-to, *plus* a bonus insight in the female psyche. Surrounded by inexperienced hormone-laden teenagers, I should have been pretty much the only one playing the game who actually knew the rules and how to work around them.
Well, that much was true.
Problems that arose — well, to take just one. I think when most teenaged boys worry about their first time, it’s about shit like, "Am I gonna come too fast?" "Will I be able to get her off?" "Will she be willing to ever have sex with me again afterwards?" "Am I still gonna be a virgin when I’m thirty?" Probably shit like that.
Whereas *I* was worrying about shit like, "Am I gonna slip up and leave the girl in a coma?" (As if doing that during that first make out session with Stacy hadn’t been embarrassing enough. At least Mom showed me how to reverse it...) Or, "Am I gonna call her the wrong name in the middle of things? Like, the *really* wrong name?"
Some normal kids would be worrying about their sexual preferences or their gender identity at my age, I think. It happens, mutant soulsucker or not. I don’t know if I would have or not if I’d been "left alone" — but with a head full of people, not all of them completely straight and not all of them even *male*, well...
Like it or not, I was bi. No two ways about it. And like it or not, I know more about shit like matching colors and putting on makeup properly than I really needed to. (Which actually bothered Dad more than the sex stuff. Hell, he isn’t exactly 100% hetero himself. Which as far as I’m concerned is Too Much Fucking Information right there.)
But all that could be dealt with. No big thing. The truly horrifying stuff came from certain individuals I had absorbed.
It adds whole new layers to that Freudian fave the Oedipal complex when you have your father’s very own first-person point of view on your mother.
Then again, that’s still a common enough complex among the non-mutant populace to have its own name. I can deal with that — especially since Mom herself knows *exactly* what it’s like to be randomly channeling other people. We laugh it off and deal. Again, not a very big thing.
Now, having my *mom’s* very own personal feelings for my *father* — *that* leads into hitherto unimagined realms of emotional scarring.
Doesn’t help that Mom and I wound up actually *linking* when she gave me the "shortcut lesson" in controlling this absorption thing. She was only the third person I’d "touched," and after that afternoon I never had to share my head with anybody I didn’t *choose* to let in — but for those few hours that we were "practicing," tossing energy and bits of ourselves back and forth between us — well, she got a lot of me and I got a lot of her. For keeps.
Advantages and disadvantages. Mom’s a real tangle of different people, sort of a gestalt entity if you like the sci-fi term. So having her decades of experience in dealing with this stuff is pretty goddamn handy. Disadvantages... are as previously noted.
There were a very nasty few weeks after my powers first kicked in — after the *absorption* kicked in, I should say — where I was channeling Stacy and both of my parents for random and occasionally obnoxious or embarrassing intervals. After a month or so I had adjusted to the point of being able to keep a lid on things — but only when I was awake.
Things still liked to pop up from the subconscious in dreams. It’s what dreams are there for, I think — a safety valve, an escape hatch, or even an early warning system. Some of the things now bubbling around in *my* subconscious did *not* mix well with the typical adolescent male hormonal levels...
When I was younger, my parents would come to my room if I had a nightmare. Wake me up from it if I didn’t on my own, sit with me a little while until I went back to sleep. Dad especially — with his hearing, he can keep track of what’s going on all over the house.
A couple of weeks after the skin trick kicked in — meaning a week or so after that training session with Mom — he quit doing that. Things got a little... uncomfortable a time or two.
For a while after that, Mom was the one waking me up if I seemed to need it. Not that uncomfortable shit didn’t come up, especially in that first minute or two before I was really awake enough to realize who I really *was* — but like I said, she knows *exactly* where — or rather, *who* — it’s really coming from. So we can laugh it off and deal.
Still, an edgy situation — especially for a fourteen-year-old. Which I still *was* on the inside, extra people in my skull or not. So I started finding alternate late-night support systems after a while.
* * *
It’s not that Mac is really that big of a natural geek — it’s just that he’s handicapped by his parents. Or rather, by his father.
Genetics is a part of it — his dad Steve is one of those freakishly intelligent science types that does hideous math shit in his head and throws himself into complicated groundbreaking research that wins Nobel Prizes and shit like that. Mac is already up to calculus-based physics — and he’s only twelve. But natural ability means exactly dick unless you get the right training and environment for it — and Steve is way too good at letting your own natural curiosity about fun things lead you right into learning something complicated.
Take the way he got Mac *started* on physics — through ballistics, when he started learning to shoot a rifle. (One of the few neat things about Texas, where Steve’s parents and sister still live. Not only can you have your own shooting range out back if you live way the fuck out in the sticks, but you can start teaching your eight-year-old grandson to handle weaponry on the annual summer visit with the full approval of your friends and neighbors, barring a few "damnyankee" immigrants here and there.) First came examining the range and accuracy of a rifle bullet — such as why wind counts for more than gravity on the flight path of a missile that small — and then they moved on to the flight of really *big* things, like artillery and mortars that can hit an enemy the soldiers aiming it aren’t even close enough to see...
Things that blow up are just cool. Unfortunately, Mac wound up learning physics. You win some, you lose some.
Lucky for him that Steve isn’t just book smart — he’s got actual sense, too. Which is why he’s also teaching Mac and the girls that making the rest of the kids feel dumb is *not* the way to make friends — and playing at least one or two sports is a *real* good idea if you want a halfway decent social life.
Plus all three of them are going to learn how to fight. Like it or don’t. And Mac doesn’t. He’s pretty nonviolent (except when it comes to his sister Morrie).
Dad told Alex it was all her fault for marrying a damn pacifist. Said that if Steve hadn’t been raised such a redneck he’d have wound up a goddamn hippie treehugger. Steve didn’t even bother taking his feet off the coffee table when he called Dad a mouthy backwoods Canuck asshole. (The fact that Dad only growled at him instead of going for his throat shows how much he really likes Steve. But he’s not going to admit that my sister actually picked a good one.)
Which is when Alex finally washed her hands of trying to teach Mac to fight herself and dumped him on Dad. So he’s either gonna learn to fight or Dad’ll carve him a new one.
Which is why Mac was in such a shitty mood earlier today. And also very colorful.
A healing factor is kind of a two-edged sword when it comes to some things. Like, it means that we don’t worry about scars, or getting sick, or coming to school all bruised up the day after a combat practice session. But it also means that Dad doesn’t hold back that much once we’ve got the basics down. Pain is quite the teaching aid. On the plus side, we learn that much faster and harder.
On the minus side, Mac is only twelve. The thing about growing up with a healing factor is that it’s only *sort of* there when we’re little. No scars, didn’t get sick very much at all, tended to heal maybe two or three times as fast as normal. It doesn’t start getting really efficient, shoot-me-up-and-watch-the-bullet-holes-close, until puberty. At fifteen, I can take a pounding and be more or less fine by dinnertime. At Mac’s age, he’ll be okay by morning — but only an hour or so after Dad finally let him out of the gym he was still pretty bruised. At the really vivid purple stage.
Which was why I let him drape himself over the bed while I was in the desk chair.
* * *
* * *
Sometimes it can be a lot of fun if everyone thinks you’re crazy.
Not really *being* crazy, but acting that way. Making a show of it. An image thing.
I used to do that, a few years ago. A way to be the baddest of the bad, compensate for a lack of size and visual intimidation. (*Dad* had the size thing going, but Mom doesn’t. So I’m probably going to wind up about average, maybe 5'9" or 5'10" — while Mac no doubt turns out to be a head taller.) Since I tend to keep the mutant thing under wraps, I went for other forms of social compensation.
Hence the crazy. The idea that a dose of insanity adds a certain oomph to one’s fighting ability is pretty well-known. (As Steve likes to quote, "It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.") Letting my classmates know that I was sharing skin with a feral beast wouldn’t have been nearly as helpful as merely convincing them that I’m a nutjob who needs to be treated with respect.
Ironically, I didn’t start out deliberately *trying* to get a "psycho boy" rep. I just did my thing — and if it involved kicking a few asses that needed it, mouthing off to a few teachers that deserved it, and generally being a short-tempered pain in the ass, so be it.
Dad used to kick my ass a lot. Not like training — in training, he’s kind of pulling his punches, holding himself to not far above my own skill level — and I’m supposed to fight back. But outside the gym, if he raises a hand to me I’d better shut up and take it unless I’m sure I can *really* take him this time, no holds barred.
At least, he used to. Hasn’t happened much in the past year — not since I got a head full of him, and learned how little of it was genuinely due to getting pissed off at me mouthing off and how much was due to genuinely trying to pound some sense into me, teach me to respect authority on occasion. Didn’t work too well — just used to piss me off a lot more instead of making me see the error of my ways — but I understand him now.
Not that smacking me around was really the best way to go about keeping me in line. But then, I was an obnoxious little shit a few year ago, and I can see why Dad figured I needed to get smacked occasionally. Getting a head full of Dad actually did me a lot more good along those lines. I still mouth off sometimes — but at least I can usually tell what crosses the line without needing to get hit to point it out to me.
Sometimes I even realize something isn’t a good thing to say *before* it’s already out of my mouth.
All that was just being an obnoxious teenager, though. Admittedly with the feral thing adding to the problem, but it was all pretty understandable. Managed to intimidate some of my classmates just doing what came naturally, though, and when I noticed I decided I liked it enough to play it up, go for more of the same. Wear black clothes or military surplus. Let slip little details from combat training or the survivalist shit Dad had taught the whole family. Mention my dad who has a Harley and used to be in Special Forces. (Hey, he probably *was*.) Then there was theat time I walked into class with a cigarette and when the teacher got after me I stubbed it out in the palm of my hand.
I really had a lot of fun in junior high. At least until my *other* powers kicked in.
Insanity isn’t half as much fun when it’s genuine. Though now that I wasn’t even *trying* to act crazy anymore, I had everyone at school more convinced than ever.
At least, I’d mostly gotten a handle on things after a few months. But it sure as hell made the jump to high school interesting.
Oh, once I was in high school I could have gone to Xavier’s. Didn’t want to, though. Since I was living with a pair of instructors (aka "Mom" and "Dad"), I was already getting all the training I needed for my gifts — and a fair bit more besides from Dad. Going to a normal high school not only gave me the kind of regular education crap everyone wants to shove down the throats of kids my age, but it let me practice things like dealing with "normals" and trying to pass for one myself. So when I wanted to stay in school with my junior high friends for another year or two, no one saw a problem with it.
The upshot was that when I was having a series of powers-related crises, I was surrounded by normals who didn’t know what my problems *really* were. But I insisted on sticking it out as long as I could handle it, and my parents let me.
Mostly I managed to keep it under control during school hours. There were some incidents, though.
Take art class. I was having a hell of a lot of fun. But by about the third month of the semester, the school counselor and I were on a first-name basis. Seemed like every new class project, the teacher freaked at what I did and sent me to the counselor. I don’t know *what* her problem was — I wound up buying my own supply of red paint since I was using so much of it, so it wasn’t like I was blowing the class budget singlehandedly.
The next semester they nudged me into theater. I wasn’t really on board with that plan — art was borderline, but acting seemed like a pretty pansy class to me. Turned out to be okay, though — if only because the teacher had a pretty high tolerance for "drama" so long as I didn’t actually mangle anybody. Anybody *living*, anyway — there was a teddy bear fatality, but the life of a prop is fraught with peril.
I had to spend a lot time dealing with the assistant principal, too. *He* was a world-class prick. But things took a turn for the better the time he couldn’t get hold of Mom and wound up calling in Dad for a conference instead. After about ten minutes of listening to the jerk rant, Dad gave Van Allen a total snow job about how I was going to get the shit beat out of me when I got home, and convinced the sadistic bastard that he could just kind of blow off a lot of administrative punishments in the future in favor of just calling Dad and letting him "take care of it." Dad can be pretty convincing — especially when he’s discussing violence. I think Van Allen was actually terrified of him — but still pretty smug about me "getting what was coming to me."
I was actually kind of worried when we got out of there — Dad marching me out with a hand on the back of my neck to "keep me from escaping" — until we were out of earshot and Dad muttered, "Is he *always* that big an asshole?"
"Always," I said.
Dad definitely has his good moments.
* * *
* * *
I treated it carefully. The first few absorptions had been accidental, but my and my mother’s experiences had been enough to warn me to go carefully once I was able to pick and choose.
In fact, what I had done was to go on an absorption spree, among my closest friends and family.
I don’t know if Mom would have done the same, if she’d had that choice right when her powers kicked in, the way I did. But I thought I was being smart. I could practice absorbing with people I was already close to, who wouldn’t mind me having their personalities and who I could probably get along with fairly well inside my own head. For the most part, it worked out that way. My head got a bit crowded, but that came with the territory.
And then I got careless, because up until that point things had gone well...
* * *
* * *
Of *course* I wasn’t expecting it. Who would? It was just a carton of milk.
Just a stupid fucking carton of milk.
A stupid fucking carton of milk with a picture on the side of it...
A picture of a missing kid.
If I’d thought about it at all, *that* might have given me a warning, a little clue to the unsuspected risk factor in my morning cereal.
But I didn’t read the description underneath, didn’t even look at the picture on the milk carton properly. Just let my eyes glance past it. Another teenager who ran away, or kid whose parents got into a custody battle that the loser couldn’t stand to let go of.
I can’t remember what I was thinking about — a history quiz, a girl I wanted to ask out, maybe what I wanted to do after school — but it sure as hell wasn’t about the girl on the milk carton.
So the memory took me with no warning at all.
/Pretty little dark haired thing playing by herself on the edge of the schoolyard. Very small — kindergarten, maybe first grade. [They teach them caution so early these days...]
"Hi there! I was wondering if you’ve seen a lost puppy around here?... You haven’t? Do you think you could help me look for him? My little girl’s going to be very upset if I can’t find him for her..." [That’s it, tell her I’ve got a little girl of my own, because daddies are *safe*...]
Sunshine yellow jumper with big bright tulips on the front. Pigtails held by rubber bands with smiling suns on them. Pink pony panties that didn’t match the rest of the outfit. [Guess Mommy didn’t think anyone would see them when she dressed her little girl for school this morning...]
"Mommy! I want my Mommy!" <sobbing> "MOMMEEEE!!"
A shallow grave in a field near a small town — INSERT NAME OF TOWN HERE, that was the city limit sign he had passed a few miles back. He kept her pony panties, in a drawer at home along with all the others.../
* * *
The milk carton lay on the floor. Half-full or half-empty when I knocked it off the table, it was now definitely empty. Dark eyes taunted me from across the room, a sideways stare across the lake of spilled milk.
I couldn’t bring myself to go near it — to pick it up, or at least to turn it so that Amber Leigh Foster no longer stared at me accusingly. Instead I read the description over and over — enhanced vision no advantage in this case as the distance refused to blur the writing for me.
I was still crouching on the floor when Dad came in. He took in the scene, but didn’t ask me what had happened. He probably figured that when and if I was capable of telling him about it I would, but until then he might as well see what he could deduce himself.
When he bent down to pick up the milk carton — cautiously, as though it might be booby-trapped — his fingers covered her face and broke the spell.
"I thought — I thought I had gotten all of them. All of the names." I let him look at the milk carton, see the face, add things up. When I saw his face set and his shoulders tense at the sparse details of a life that had lasted less than six years, I managed to add, "She’s in a field — outside INSERT NAME OF TOWN HERE, maybe ten or fifteen miles from a city limits sign. There’s a... a creek, or a culvert, nearby — she’s less than a hundred yards off the road. I don’t... don’t have any more details I could give..." [Please don’t ask if I could find it, please don’t ask if I could find it...]
I lucked out. Dad carried the milk carton into the next room as though it were a cranky rattlesnake, got his cell phone and called the information number given with the picture. Going into the next room was a gesture to spare me more grief, although I could still hear his end of the conversation as he left an anonymous tip passing on the small amount I had been able to give him.
After he had hung up, he came back into the kitchen. I hadn’t moved, was still staring at the puddle. He let it lie for the moment, and quietly sat down beside me.
"I want you to know — killing’s not a noble thing, or a good thing — but sometimes it’s necessary. Don’t ever be ashamed of what you did to him, son. His was the kind of life the world is better off without."
"It won’t bring her back, though. It won’t bring any of them back."
"I know. But at least there are a lot of other little girls that he won’t ever have a chance to kill."
I though about it while he got up, decided the paper towels wouldn’t cut it and went for a mop. I waited until he was done before getting up — if a psychological crisis can’t get you out of a little housework, then what good *is* it? — and said, "It’s not that I killed him that’s bothering me. I can pretty much live with that." No lie — I wasn’t losing any sleep over *his* precious right to live.
"What, then?" Dad prompted me when I didn’t immediately finish the thought.
"It’s that I don’t like remembering the things he did like *I* was the one that did them. *That’s* what I want to get rid off..."
* * *
* * *
I’d like to start out by saying that I didn’t have any nefarious purpose when I went over to T.J.’s new apartment earlier today. Kurt had picked up his grandson Kevin from school and Mac had gone with them, and I wanted to see if they’d shown up at Kevin’s home yet. Turned out they were all three still out doing God knows what, and Helene — T.J.’s daughter, Kevin’s sister — was at soccer practice. So she was all alone in the apartment when I got there. I wouldn’t have stayed any longer than it took me to find out Mac and Kevin weren’t there, except that I could tell she’d been crying before she answered the door.
On her, it’s really hard to tell. It’s not like you can see her face get all flushed or her eyes getting red — the blue kind of hides it. But I spotted the damp patches on her cheeks — fuzz just doesn’t wipe dry the way skin does — and her eyes looked a little swollen.
This was another case of other people’s reactions coloring mine, because the fraction of my sister that lived in my skull saw her oldest friend hurting and leaped forward. Mom and Dad weren’t far behind her — they’ve been helping take care of T.J. since she was a baby. I wouldn’t have been very comfortable collaring T.J. for a session of "girl talk" on my own — but I’ve known her since *I* was a baby, and I didn’t want to just turn around and leave her to sit around and sob in an empty apartment.
Definitely a situation where subliminal guidance was called for. I let "Alex" handle the segue from asking about Mac and Kevin to, "What’s wrong?"
As if I didn’t already have a pretty good idea. T.J. and her kids were in a new apartment because she and her husband Andrew were getting a divorce. The split had not been her idea.
"Nothing," she said, meaning, Nothing I want to bother you with, or even, Nothing I want to talk to a kid about.
Points for her — I have more respect for people who’d rather reserve their problems for a select few than demand sympathy from everyone they come across. For T.J., I was willing to make the push to be one of the "select few."
"Since when have you ever cried over ‘nothing’?" She narrowed her eyes at me, and I remembered that Alex and I were two separate people. I "took the driver’s seat" just long enough to say, "I’m not trying to be nosy, but Alex won’t let me walk away right now."
I’ve only been sharing headspace for about a year now, but my family and our friends — our mutant friends, at least — have been dealing with my mom for years. Which comes in real handy for me at times, because they’ve all had plenty of practice in accepting somebody who tends to be somebody *else* at times.
Shit, after you’ve grown up with your "Aunt Marie" channeling your own *mother* at times, I guess having your best friend’s little brother offer himself as a sibling surrogate isn’t that hard to deal with.
So she accepted the situation, the flash of irritation disappearing, and stepped back to invite me in. "Alex" steered me towards the kitchen, advising that it was a good time for cocoa. Watching me grab the box of Swiss Miss and head for the cabinet with the mugs seemed to reassure T.J. that she was in fact at least partially dealing with my sister — or at least to remind her that our two families were close enough not to be treated like "guests" in each others’ homes. She sat at the table and let me handle the refreshments.
While I decided that "I hope you catch AIDS and die" wasn’t the mug sentiment to go for in this situation and grabbed the "St. Dogbert casts out the demons of stupidity" for her instead, she got the ball rolling. "I had a little... meeting with Andrew today. Lawyers present on both sides."
"Sharks all around." I didn’t really need to remind her that she had been the only non-shyster in the room, but it was something to say.
"Yeah. I... had a bit of a surprise for Andy, though. Seems he didn’t realize that I could not only name each and every one of his girlfriends, but actually got a few of the more disgruntled former one to agree to testify against him."
"Testify to what?" I asked, bringing my own "Fuck you you fuckin’ fuck" mug with me to the table. I was being slow — I assumed she was talking about women Andrew had dated before they got married.
"That he was cheating on me with them," looking amused. At my ignorance rather than at the situation, I assumed.
I must have made some surprised noise — I knew things had gotten pretty nasty between the two of them, but hadn’t realized that adultery had been involved. [Quiet, you,] Subliminal Alex warned. Guess *she* had known all about it.
"So — he was doing that for — how long?" Trying to find something halfway intelligent to say...
"Nine years. *And* a couple of them can testify that I knew all about it — *while it was going on* — and did nothing."
"Which proves...?" I asked, tentatively. Alex had gotten me in the door and T.J. talking, but it seemed from here on out I was on my own. Apparently she hadn’t discussed strategy with T.J. before the last time I’d absorbed her.
"Aside from the fact that I cared about preserving my marriage more than my own self-respect? Basically it presents me as the long-suffering wife and him as an asshole." She had sort of a grim half-smile on her face that I couldn’t quite characterize.
"Is there an actual legal purpose to that, or is it just character assassination for the sheer joy of it?" I asked lightly. Somehow T.J. had always come across as the perky contrast to my own occasionally grim family. Dark self-deprecating humor was something I hadn’t really associated with her before now.
But then, I hadn’t ever absorbed T.J. Which called into question how well I really knew her.
And suddenly I wanted to correct that.
"Well, of course character assassination is half the fun of divorce court," with forced lightness, "but the main goal is to shake him down for as much money as possible *and* keep main custody of the kids."
"Why shouldn’t you? Get custody, I mean?"
"Well, aside from the mutant card he might play —" which might not work, *Helene* being a blatantly obvious mutant herself "— there’s the fact that he can afford to support them better than I can —" which is what child support is there to balance out, of course "— and the way that he already has the next Mrs. Stewart all lined up, which would give the kids a ready-made stepmommy, while I’m going to be single for the foreseeable future." Pause. "Then the character assassination comes in, with *him* accusing *me* of cheating."
I hesitated, but *she* was the one who had brought it up. "Did you?"
"No. At least... Not when and with who he’s claiming. I got to talking with one of his coworkers at one of those godawful office parties I used to get dragged to sometimes, and we were really hitting it off. I was actually tempted, but then Andy saw us talking and jumped to some conclusions and I just decided it wasn’t worth risking. It turns into our word against Andy’s, but given that this guy will also say we didn’t and some of Andy’s exes *will* say that they *did* — well, I don’t think Andy was expecting the adultery ploy to backfire against him like that." That was a definite smirk on her face now.
Scheming, vindictive, possessed of unsuspected reserves of foresight and self-control, *and* with a dark sense of humor — how had I managed to miss all this before? No *wonder* she and Alex had been so close for so long — they were *both* vicious bitches. T.J. was charming me more and more every minute.
I *had* to get to know her better.
That’s the really addictive thing about personality absorption. It’s sort of like the difference between dating somebody and having been married to them for years — the one way you see them as they try to present themselves, on their best behavior, while the other lets you see them at their best and worst, when the masks are no longer bothered with. But even being married doesn’t guarantee full knowledge — if you aren’t observant, or if they don’t share all their secrets with you.
Absorption, though — it’s like getting a taste of how they see themselves — flavored with enough actual memory to let you judge something of the accuracy of their self-perceptions. No lies, no masks, no years and years of careful observation — just one touch was all it took.
Which was why some people who knew what I could do refused me that one touch. (Including T.J.’s own father.) But given the atmosphere of shared confidences, I thought asking might be worth a shot.
"May I?" reaching for her hand but halting about a foot away from genuine contact, waiting for permission.
She understood what I was requesting — not slow at all. She settled back into her chair and gave me a thoughtful look, narrowing her eyes at me.
I waited, left my hand in midair where it was, and gave her time to think. I was asking her to let me have something that couldn’t be given back if either of us changed our minds, after all.
It was a very intimate thing — not only would I potentially be getting a lot of her secrets, that could pop into my conscious awareness at any given time afterwards, but I would be sharing headspace with her for probably the rest of my life.
T.J. apparently recognized it as an extreme compliment rather than idle curiosity on my part. She accepted, putting her mug down and placing her hand in mine.
I wasn’t sure if she was merely responding to my gesture or actually realized that the bare skin of her palms was one of the few areas of her body that I *could* absorb her through. (Fur insulates.) I still don’t — that wasn’t what she was thinking about when I touched her...
Memories sift to the surface as they want to. There’s a major dose with that first touch, though — especially anything that might have been on a person’s mind right before I touched them. And the big shock comes the first time — after that, they’re familiar. They’re already *in* my head — later contact is just like a fresh coat of paint, or a booster shot for a vaccine.
This being my first time with T.J., I was glad I was already sitting down.
/"Honey, you’ve been working so *late* this past week..." <chuckling> "If I didn’t know better, I’d worry that you were having an affair!" [That’s it, squirm, you bastard... Nice to see that you at least feel *guilty* about it...]/
/"So tell me, Andy, it’s the one thing I’ve been wondering. I can’t see a single thing any of your girlfriends have in common with the others. Was there *anything* they all had that I didn’t?" [Or was just the variety you wanted? Please tell me they just happened to be whoever was around whenever you had an attack of "zipper trouble" ...]
"Ambition. Every single one of them was using her God-given talents and skills to make something of herself. Not a single one of them wanted to just sit around at home playing housewife and taking care of the kids."
[Oh, hell. Is *that* what this was all about?]/
/"You’re — you’re going into teaching? But I thought — I thought that once Helene was in school that you would be — well, your parents and... everyone else —"
[Our mutant friends, you mean? Half the frickin’ X-Men?]
"— keep asking when you’re going back...?"
"You mean back to the X-Men? But I —" [had Kevin to get *off* the team] "— didn’t really fit on the team."
"But I’m sure they *want* you back, they keep asking about when...?"
[They want to recoup the investment on the years they spent training me, is all.] "Andy, there wasn’t a thing I can do that half a dozen others can’t do as well or better. And if I’m teaching I can still be taking care of the kids when they get out of school... " [Instead of wasting my time running around at all hours playing vigilante and maybe getting *killed* over something so *stupid*...]/
/"Liebchen, if you need somewhere to stay now — there’s plenty of room here, and if —"
"Dad, if you bring up the X-Men again, I’m hanging up this phone."
"...All right, then. But the offer is open, even if you don’t join the team. We could always use more *real* teachers here."
"No, Dad, thanks but no thanks."
"Are you sure? You’d have all the help you want looking after Kevin and Helene..."
[As if they didn’t already get enough brainwashing from you and Mom...] "I grew up with the whole mutant activist thing. I want my kids to at least have a *chance* at normal if they want it." [Like the one I had to marry and move out to get...]/
/"Mommy, I want to be a cheerleader when I get big!"
<chuckling> "No you don’t, baby. You’d have to smile all the time and wear little short skirts even in cold weather."
"I can do it! I can smile all the time! See! See! And I can climb up on people and do flips and everything!"
"Yes, you take after your daddy, don’t you? But you can do a lot better with all that than just bouncing around with a bunch of bimbos-in-training."
<frowning> "But I *want* to be a cheerleader, Mommy!"
"Well, we’ll see what happens when you’re older, T.J...."/
* * *
* * *
One day, Morrigan Alicia MacAllister is going to be a world-class prize-winning hellraising bitch on wheels. She’ll be capable of throwing awe-inspiringly lethal temper tantrums. Able to cope with any situation she finds herself in with attitude, style, and sheer bloody-minded strength of will. She’ll grow into the name.
But right now, she’s a seven-year-old girl, who doesn’t like being named after a Celtic battle goddess because too many of the people she meets mispronounce it Morgan and she’d rather just be Morrie. The hair should darken to a regal auburn when she’s grown, but right now it’s annoyingly carroty. And someday she’ll appreciate having such a close-knit family, but for now she hates her older brother and bosses her little sister.
I get along with her better — maybe because I don’t live under the same roof, or maybe it’s just the difference between being five years older and being eight years older. Though she doesn’t really like it when I call her "Regan" — but that nickname is Steve’s fault. (We were watching The Exorcist one night and when it got to the scene where a bunch of docs and nurses are holding Regan down to give her a sedative, Steve said, "My god, it’s like taking Morrie to get a shot!" Then again, he’s also the one who named her Morrigan in the first place, getting to her birth certificate while Alex was still sleeping off the ordeal of her arrival.) Aside from a little teasing, Morrie and I get along pretty well.
What happened — it wasn’t her fault. Not in the slightest. But she was how I got involved.
It wasn’t that — she wasn’t a victim. What she almost did...
One day — when she grows into the Morrigan, when she can break someone’s arm in fourteen places without breaking a sweat or even changing expression — one day, she’ll be able to do what she came so close to doing and come out of it in one piece. And if I can ever think about it without getting a case of the shakes, I might even be proud of her for trying to be a hero so young.
But this time it came so close to getting her killed...
* * *
With Alex taking Mac to soccer practice, T.J. might have been the one to pick up Morrie from elementary school along with Helene. But it was Friday, and Andrew got the kids for the weekend, so T.J. wouldn’t be going to either school that afternoon. Mom or Dad would have been the next choices for backup rides, but both of them had classes of their own to deal with, so I wound up being the one "volunteered" to escort her home from school. It wasn’t that Morrie needed a bodyguard on her walk home, so much as someone to make sure that she went *straight* home without too many amusing detours along the way.
It was a pretty short walk from my high school to her elementary, which was good because I didn’t have a ride of my own. (Not that I couldn’t *drive* — just that I wasn’t old enough to do it on my own *legally* yet.) I managed to get there about fifteen or twenty minutes from the time both our classes let out, but she wasn’t waiting for me out front where she should have been.
Like I said, I was a watchdog rather than a bodyguard. So I wasn’t worried that she was missing — just a little irritated, wondering where the hell that kid had gotten to. Couldn’t be too far, she being on foot and only seven — I can move a lot faster, and track her by scent besides.
Well, I could once I was able to pick out her scent from the ones left by the hundreds of other kids leaving the school at about the same time she did. The trick would be to narrow the direction down a little — see if I could find out which way she had been headed when she left.
The first thing to do, of course, was to make sure she wasn’t there. But she wasn’t in her last classroom, and she wasn’t anywhere around the outside. Nope. No longer at the school.
So the next thing to do was circle — walk around the perimeter of the school until I caught that whiff that said, "Morrie was right *here*." She *had* been on these school grounds, so barring flight, tunneling, or teleportation, she would have crossed the property line at some point when she left. And that would be where I picked up her trail.
And I did. Not far from where she should have been waiting for me, either — within easy view of the front steps of the school, to the side away from the faculty parking lot. She had stood just within the fence for a short time, with another girl close to her age, and an adult male — a strange scent, one that I didn’t like. The other girl had left alone in *this* direction, while Morrie and the guy had gone off *that* way.
I couldn’t quite tell whether they left together, or she was following him, or *he* was following *her* — but I didn’t like any of the possibilities.
I trailed them away from the school for several blocks, getting more and more worried. The good news was that it was a very fresh trail, and growing hotter as I went. They hadn’t left that long ago, and I was gaining on them. The bad news was that by the way the scents were layered, they were either together or he was following her very closely. Which didn’t thrill me — at least if Morrie had been shadowing this guy for some reason, I might have had a shot a catching up with *her* before *she* caught up to *him*.
Right now, I just hoped I caught up to them before he got her into a car — no *way* I’d catch them on foot.
Somehow, it never really occurred to me to hope he was harmless. He just didn’t smell that way.
* * *
* * *
It was a very near thing — I rounded a corner and stopped dead at the sight of some guy apparently coaxing Morrie to climb into the open door of his car.
My first impulse was to yell, "Hey, *you*!" and start running. But before I yelled, several of the voices in my head warned me not to.
[Ease off,] Inner Dad said. [Don’t let him know he’s caught just yet. At least get closer before you start him running.]
[If he runs now, he gets away,] Subliminal Mom added.
[And he might just pull Morrie into the car with him before he goes,] Alex added with the expected maternal paranoia.
[He’d just about *have* to. She’s seen his face, she could identify him.] Steve was as always too level-headed to let his parental concern shut off his ability to think.
[So long as he knows you’ve got him pegged as a pedo, anyway,] Dad said craftily. [So don’t jump down *his* throat yet...]
The internal conference had gone by quickly enough that Morrie was still standing on the curb listening to the guy talk. So when I yelled, "MORRIGAN ALICIA MACALLISTER!! *What the HELL do you think you’re doing*?!" both she and the guy jumped and froze, giving me the deer-in-the-headlights glazed stare. I had "borrowed" Steve for that one to get the full blaze of outraged parental authority, and it had come out in his best shouting-across-the-back-pasture bellow. (And with more than a trace of his accent as well, but I couldn’t really pick and choose.)
Seeing that the guy was considering bolting, I went on. "You *know* you were supposed to wait for me to pick you up after school — not go wandering off across half the goddamn town! I have been chasing after you for the past ten minutes!"
Which calmed the guy down, as I had intended. I wasn’t halting a suspected kidnapping, just getting after a kid for wandering off. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head — [Okay, this one’s getting away from me, but at least I’m not getting caught.] A fake contrition overlying the relief, he said, "I’m sorry, I was just trying to get some help finding my dog. I didn’t mean to get your daughter in trouble..."
He broke off as I got close enough for him to get a good look at my face and realize how young I actually was. "She’s not my daughter, she’s my niece," I said truthfully. "And she’s still in a lot of trouble for running off like that." Which was true in more ways than just one, as I knew and as I could see him thinking. I didn’t need to be a telepath to know that he was reconsidering his move at this point, wondering if he could deal with me and still somehow get away with Morrie.
All I was — as far as he could tell from looking at me — was an average-sized fourteen-year-old. And assuming that was true, he could probably take me if he tried — especially if he could lure me closer then get the drop on me.
I was more than happy to oblige him. No *way* I was letting this guy get off scott-free. Otherwise the kids he grabbed after that would be at least partially my fault. But I couldn’t in good conscience do anything nasty to him unless I *knew* he was a baddie — or turn him over to the cops without evidence or just cause or something.
Which was why I wanted him within touching distance. I could get him down for the count *and* get a load of his memories to pick through that would give me an idea of how best to deal with him.
"Well, no harm done," he said, edging closer. "She was only trying to help. Listen, can I give you kids a ride somewhere?"
His back turned to Morrie, he couldn’t see the way she rolled her eyes. Great. So she could tell for herself that he was full of shit — then why the hell had she gone with him?
That question would have to be answered later, because the guy was within a few feet of me and reaching into his jacket pocket — casually, as though reaching for his car keys.
The little metal hypospray fell to the pavement forgotten when my hand touched his face.
/[Get the little shit out cold, toss him in the trunk... Dammit, I wanted to be able to use the knockout spray on the girl, make sure she doesn’t go yelling for help when I’ve got her in the car... Oh, well, she can ride in the trunk with her uncle. Maybe it’ll even scare her enough to do what I tell her, at first...]/
/Sad little face, big blue eyes, long brown hair. "Mister, have you seen my dog? He ran out the back gate and I’ve been calling him and calling him..." Blue leash held balled-up hopefully in one hand. He kept the leash — along with little Heather’s undies — long after disposing of her body in a drainage ditch. The prop worked spectacularly in convincing more unwary little doglovers to follow him.../
/So crude, to use the duct tape — but they just didn’t make handcuffs that small. It worked well as a gag, too — but no more kids with colds, after that one had suffocated before he was quite finished with her. Those runny noses were just disgusting anyway.../
/"And after two weeks, police are finally calling off the search for Stephanie Anderson, missing since August 19th from her school in Yonkers. Her parents say they have not yet given up hope of finding their daughter — " <chuckling> [Guess they haven’t been digging in the right places, then.]/
* * *
It was Mom’s voice screaming in my head that made me pull my hand away. [Jack! JACK! You don’t want any more of this guy in your head!] I was frozen, unable to think anything but *his* thoughts.
I had never touched anyone before I could call "bad," let alone "evil." Even Dad had a lot of pretty good qualities mixed in with the violent tendencies and anger-management issues.
But this guy — this fuck. This waste of skin.
He killed little kids — he *hurt* little kids. And then he killed them. And then he laughed as their parents looked for them and couldn’t even find the bodies...
I’ve done a lot of things that weren’t really my idea in the past year or so. But this one. This one was all me.
The knife wasn’t legal on school property. But my high school was decent enough that it didn’t have metal detectors, and so far I hadn’t committed any offenses that rated a search of my person, and I was smart enough never to have pulled it at school. And if I’d ever gotten caught with it, Dad would have done his damnedest to get me out of trouble for it. Because he’d given it to me. Because life can be harsh and unexpected and because he and Mom have enemies who wouldn’t be above taking their problems out on a kid and because I don’t have six blades (or even bone claws) lying in wait in my forearms and because some people just shouldn’t be unarmed *ever*.
I pulled my switchblade out of my pocket and with the memories of what Joseph Peterson had done still vivid behind my eyes I grabbed him by the front of the shirt and cut his throat.
After as many years as I’d spent practicing knife-fighting with Dad (with real injuries), I knew enough to avoid the splash from the severed veins without even having to think about it.
* * *
* * *
I don’t recall exactly what happened for a few minutes after that. I think I just stood there staring at the body on the ground for a while. It was Morrie who snapped me out of it.
I had been so far gone that it hadn’t really registered on me that she had seen the whole thing. I had just killed someone, and I’d never done that before. Having Dad’s memories of killing a lot of people wasn’t really helping to soften the edges of it, either. I was fifteen and I had just cut a man’s throat.
In front of a seven-year-old girl.
Who was doing pretty good so far at not screaming or freaking out or anything like that. But after I hadn’t done anything about the cooling stiff on the pavement for a few minutes, she edged closer. "Jack?... Jack?" This was a Situation, and I didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.
And the thing was, I’d just absorbed somebody new, so I wasn’t in any shape for clear thinking just then. Sometimes it gets tricky remembering which of the voices in my head is *me*, and right then, "Holy fuck, I just killed somebody!" was warring with, "Jesus God, is that — that can’t be my body down there. That little shit can’t have just killed me — I’m still *here*, dammit!"
So when Morrie spoke up, it actually jostled both of us in there. Me, because it reminded me that I had her to take care of, corpse on the ground or not — and Joseph because it reminded him of what he’d been planning to do with her before I’d shown up.
Which was bad enough that it shook me out of the daze I was in. [The dipshit deserved it, and I need somewhere to dump him.] And fast, before someone saw me standing there with a dead body and a bloody knife.
I had a look around, and was relieved to see that so far there were no witnesses. Lucky for me the guy — Joseph — had parked in an alleyway off a quiet street. No, not lucky — he had planned it that way, so no one would be able to link reports of a missing girl to memories of seeing her getting into his car. But the point was that I still had at least a few minutes in which I could probably deal with this. "Okay, things to do now..."
First issue — disposing of a body. Leaving it here wasn’t a great option — I didn’t know for sure who might have seen which of the three of us heading this direction, or what pieces might be put together from eyewitness stories by the cops.
Fortunately we now had access to a car, with a trunk that had already seen service as a method of cadaver transport.
I wiped my knife clean on Joseph’s shirt and put it back in my pocket before dumping him in his own trunk. I paused to study him lying there, enjoying the sense of justice — while Joseph raged behind my eyes at the horrible unfairness of it all. I slammed the trunk without searching his pockets, already knowing his car keys were in the wheel where he had put them after unlocking the doors to let Morrie in.
I didn’t like leaving the bloodstain on the sidewalk — but unless his DNA profile was in the system, the cops wouldn’t be able to identify whose blood it was unless they had a list of possible victims to work with. And I wanted his body to be discovered very far from the murder site — if in fact it was discovered at all.
I had just absorbed someone who, among his many "talents," was an expert in corpse disposal. But his advice would be less than desirable right now — after all, he’d *want* me to get caught. Time to go for some outside help.
"Come on," I told Morrie. "Get in the car. We need to go get Dad."
* * *
* * *
Amazingly, in all the lessons Dad had given me over the years — fighting, wilderness survival, driving, hunting, dealing with small children — How to Stash a Stiff 101 had somehow been left out of the curriculum. I could have probably gotten the information from Subliminal Dad — but with what was going on in my head right then, and given how important this was to do properly, I thought it was best to get some outside help. Advice. A hand with a shovel. That sort of thing.
Problems came on the road. "Jack, *this* isn’t the way to Grandpa’s," Morrie worried. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet up to that point, and I’d been too lost in thought to notice.
Or rather, I’d been too busy conferring with Inner Mom to notice. I’d only touched Joseph once, compared with all the little touches I’d gotten from the others in my head — but it had been for several seconds, and between the amount I’d absorbed and the recent nature of the contact he was a very strong presence in my head right now. Only my mother was in there firmly enough to be heard over his grousing, and she and I were discussing how to deal with this unwelcome new arrival. We had been so busy thinking about this that we — or rather, I — had missed the fact that I was going the wrong way, headed not towards the Xavier School for the Gifted but rather for the freeway out of town.
Out of town and towards Joseph’s place in INSERT TOWN HERE, in fact.
Which gave me a really unpleasant chill when I realized it — that Joseph had snuck in and taken the controls while I was on autopilot. Of all the people in my head, he was the absolute worst to let take the wheel.
The more so with Morrie still in the car with me — or rather, with us.
The next bad moment came when I tried to take the next turn to loop back around and found that I couldn’t. A few more tries and I managed to get the car headed in the right direction — but I wasn’t at all happy to find out how much of a struggle he could put up inside my own head.
[First get to Dad. Then get rid of the stiff. Then see about an exorcist.]
Keeping the car pointed in the right direction was trickier than I had thought. With me paying attention to the route again, Joseph had traded the subtle takeover attempt for outright war. The second time I had to double back on my own trail, Morrie asked, "Are you all right, Jack?"
I don’t know if it was a good thing or not for her to have reminded us both of her presence. Because we weren’t just fighting over whether I got to Dad to dispose of Joseph’s body or not — it was also about what would happen to her. Whether I’d hand her over to my sister and brother-in-law safely, or...
I pulled over and stopped the car.
"Jack...?"
"Shut up." I grabbed my backpack from where I’d tossed it in the backseat and pulled out a notebook and a pen. All these faces in my head, and names...
Heather, looking for her puppy. Left in a drainage ditch outside INSERT TOWN NAME HERE.
Chelsea, taken from INSERT SCHOOL NAME HERE one afternoon in May. Buried in a shallow grave near INSERT TOWN NAME HERE.
Stephanie, wearing a yellow shirt with white bunnies on it, taken off the street in INSERT TOWN HERE. Dumped in a culvert ten miles out of town.
A little girl too shy to say her name, with lavender hair clips to match her sweater. Taken from INSERT SCHOOL NAME, left in a dumpster in the next town wrapped in a garbage bag.
I wrote down names, descriptions, places where the girls were taken from and where they could be found now. All Joseph could remember.
I was too used to it to be creeped out by the way my handwriting had changed to match that of a stranger’s.
I stopped when my hand was tired and no more memories were coming. The details had begun trickling off, as the most vivid recollections had been recorded and we had gone on to the girls he didn’t remember as clearly. He had been almost cooperative as I got into the rhythm of it, gloating over his victims. I had very carefully thought of nothing but getting the images down and maybe — please, God? — out of my head.
I didn’t allow myself to think of the list as a confession until the handwriting had been replaced by my own and Joseph had fallen into a smug silence, almost satiated by recollection of his past triumphs.
Morrie was still sitting in the passenger’s seat, watching me silently. I smiled at her, having to force it a bit. "Okay, Regan. Let’s go home now." Well. Home for me, anyway — the MacAllisters had their own home elsewhere, didn’t live on Xavier property. But she got the idea.
"What’s that you wrote down?" she asked cautiously, clearly not sure she wanted to know the answer.
That smile came easier — though with a bloodthirsty edge to it. "A little something I think the cops will want to see." The cops — or the FBI.
My plans for disposing of the not-so-dear departed had changed a bit.
* * *